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Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Challenge From A Co-Worker

Okay,
so I know that this is the time that I am supposed to do the "Whatever
Wednesday" thing where I grab my bag of Clue character cards and just
select a topic at random. But for two
reasons alone, I'm flipping the script, and I won't be picking a Clue character
card at all today.

Firstly,
it's because there's something important that I want to talk about in regards
to some recent events that have taken place in life that has made me rethink
how I do things, and have got me thinking about doing something that I have
always wanted to do, but have always put on the backburner for various reasons.

And, secondly, I can't seem to remember where I put my Clue game, so I can't
actually do the drawing this week even if I wanted to. So, maybe you could consider this the
"Mr. Boddy" week, where I make stuff up on the fly!

Okay, so as you might have guessed by the title of the blog entry this week,
this blog is all about challenges. In
fact, I'm going to talk about a challenge that someone issued me recently, and
it's a challenge that I really want to do.
I've sort of already begun this challenge as a matter of fact, but I
don't know if I can actually meet the timeline that I was given.

And, I'm guessing that by now you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about!

Okay, so part of the reason why I began this blog nearly three years ago was so
I could always have something in my life that was truly mine, and that I could
manage by myself. I don't have a whole
lot of opportunities to do that in my every day life, so at least by writing
this blog, I'd have something positive in my life to reflect on.

But another reason why I began "A Pop Culture Addict's Guide To Life"
was because I wanted to find a way to improve my writing skills enough so that
if the opportunity came along that I could make writing a full-time job, I
could transition easily from one career to another.

(At
least, that's what I told myself three years ago, anyway.)

I
have a confession for all of you reading this.
I never intended for writing to be my ultimate career goal. Like most other kids growing up, the job
that I wanted the most as a child completely changed from year to year. At some point, I wanted to be a doctor, a
fireman, a scientist, Prime Minister of Canada, and an ice cream salesman. And, well...the closest that I ever got to
achieving any of those jobs was the six months I worked in the frozen foods
department.

Hey, I sold ice cream...I just didn't have the annoying chimes or kiddie
noisemakers to attract the customers!

And,
I want to tell all of you that entertaining the possibility of writing as a
career goal was put on the backburner for quite a lot of years! I mean, growing up, I had always managed to
have a keen grasp of the English language.
I was the kid who would rather have played with lined notebook paper and
a box of crayons instead of the hottest toys of the 1980s. I had classmates surrounding my desk in
class asking them to help spell words in their journals (and I still regret not
charging them each a dime per letter).
I aced spelling tests and English assignments. And, as long as math class used word problems, I did okay. But, I suppose that once you got to high
school, there were only so many word problems that you could use to find out
the angles in an isosceles triangle.

But
did I actually consider making it a career back then? No. The thought never
even crossed my mind. After all, I was
still a kid back then. I had all the
time in the world to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

But you know, as the years passed, and I left school, I realized that out of
all of the things that I tried to do, writing was the only constant. It was the one thing that I knew how to do
and do well. It started off as a hobby
to kill time in between classes, and expanded into something that I felt as
though I had to do on a daily basis. I
guess in some manner, writing my thoughts out helped me get through some of the
worst times of my life. It helped me
get through understanding why I always put myself down, it helped me realize
that writing about my dreams was the first step towards making them come
true...

...and
as time passed by, it made me realize that writing is really one of the only
things that I feel comfortable with doing for the rest of my life.

But,
I always had excuses over why I couldn't pursue it as a career. There were no opportunities in my town to
write (which sadly is one hundred per cent true), I didn't have the time (which
was bollocks, but I'll explain that later), I didn't think I would be good
enough to land a book deal (the jury's still out on that one), etc, etc, etc.

But
then a co-worker friend of mine issued me a little bit of a challenge while we
were working a weekend shift together, and the more I think of it...the more I
wonder...can I do this?

Somehow, the conversation that we were having in between serving customers
transitioned to the subject of writing, and I think I brought up the fact that
there was an actual novel writing competition entitled "NaNoWriMo". He wondered what it was, and I explained
that it was a competition that was held every November, in which competitors
had just thirty days to write a manuscript for a whole novel. You see, NaNoWriMo stands for "National
Novel Writing Month". It's been a
tradition since 1999, and the ultimate goal is to come up with a manuscript
that has a bare minimum of 50,000 words.
No prizes are given, but the project was designed so that anybody could
say that they wrote a novel. Of course,
it would be up to the author to decide whether it is good enough to publish.

Well,
I was telling my co-worker that I had thought about taking part in NaNoWriMo at
some point, but that I didn't think I could write a novel in one month.

So, my co-worker challenged me to write a manuscript in two months instead.

Now,
I've attempted to start manuscripts before.
I think I have like six unfinished projects that I began but never
finished because I always managed to get writer's block. But I've never started and finished a
project that would be suitable for publication before because I always gave up
on it. I didn't think it was good
enough. And, I certainly didn't think
that I had the time to write a 50,000 word book.

Of course, this was before I began writing
"A Pop Culture Addict's Guide To Life", and I realized that I have
probably typed a total of five MILLION words over the last three years. I mean, writing one blog entry a day for the
last 1,000+ days...that takes a lot of dedication. And, given that the average blog entry has about 1,500 words in
it, if I devoted that time that I write the blog to writing an actual book with
a beginning, middle, and end...well, I suppose there really is no excuse.

In fact, my co-worker figured out that all I would have to do was write 834 words
each day and I would easily have a 50,000 word manuscript in the time frame of
two months.

So, that is my challenge. The question
is...do I accept it?

Well...I'm going to think about it for a bit (I have started it by coming up
with character sketches). Can I
actually make this a possibility. And,
what will this mean for the future of this blog, given that I already work a
full-time job. Is it really worth the
risk?